Prison Officials Seeking Ways to Recruit and Retain Guards

A correctional officer training class at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice William G. McConnell Unit in Beeville in October 2013.Credit
Jennifer Whitney for the Texas Tribune

BEEVILLE, Tex. — Seventeen soon-to-be corrections officers in blue-and-gray uniforms listened attentively as Maj. Robert Lopez explained the importance of their professional appearance and warned them of the corrupting influences they will face on the job.

“Corrupt employees may try to compromise the integrity of professionals,” the Texas Department of Criminal Justice trainer told his mostly young recruits — nine men and eight women — during a training session here in South Texas in October 2013.

What Mr. Lopez probably knows that these budding prison guards do not is that most of them will not be employed in the criminal justice system long enough to be corrupted. Turnover among corrections officers has been rising statewide since 2006, according to department data. And in South Texas and other oil-rich regions in the state, where the energy boom has sparked an explosion of high-wage job growth, finding and keeping prison employees has become difficult.

The desperation to retain employees has prompted an unusual approach at one South Texas prison unit, which is offering dirt-cheap on-campus housing — as low as $25 a month — to make the cost of living in such nouveau riche communities manageable for its employees. Department of Criminal Justice officials plan to offer similar options at units in other oil-rich regions.

Such recruiting tools are becoming a necessity. At the William G. McConnell Unit in Beeville, the turnover rate skyrocketed to 62 percent in 2012 from 28 percent in 2006, according to department data. As turnover increased, so did the rate of violent incidents in the prison. In 2006, there were about 12 incidents per 100 inmates; five years later, there were more than 30 incidents per 100 inmates. The trend is mirrored at other prison units near shale deposits and the refineries that process the oil harvested from them.

“We can’t compete with the private sector in these critical areas,” said Bill Stevens, the director of the Department of Criminal Justice’s correctional institutions division.

Despite lawmakers’ approval in 2013 of a 5 percent pay raise for corrections officers and the department’s efforts to increase recruiting with bonuses and housing perks, agency officials and the officers’ union say the state cannot compete with what energy companies can pay.

It is not only about the money. Officers and prison condition experts say the difficult working environment that guards face contributes to their high turnover rate. That creates a domino effect that makes it even more difficult to retain prison staff: The remaining officers must put in longer hours, and the lower guard-to-inmate ratio means violence among offenders grows.

“All of these factors feed on each other,” said Michele Deitch, a prison conditions expert and professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. (U.T.-Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.)

The Department of Criminal Justice has 3,304 corrections officer vacancies for its 109 prison units. Statewide, the agency has left roughly 1,400 prison beds empty since 2012 because of staffing shortages.

As he walked across the Garza East prison campus in Beeville, Cody Ginsel, who earlier this year served as the director of institutions for the department’s Region 4, listed the staffing numbers at the South Texas units he oversees. More than 20 percent of the positions are vacant at the Garza East, Garza West and John B. Connally units. At the McConnell Unit, the vacancy rate is 35 percent.

Mr. Ginsel stood next to 40 freshly graded lots on the edge of the prison campus, where khaki-colored boxes that hook up water and electricity stick out of the ground. It is here, in the shadows of concertina wire and watchtowers staffed by armed guards, that the Department of Criminal Justice is building a recreational vehicle park, where for $25 a month, officers will be able to pull up their trailers and live on-site.

There is already a waiting list for the 188 “bachelor officer quarters” on the prison campus. Up to four officers share the small, dorm-style rooms that the department rents to them for the same $25 monthly fee.

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Unglamorous though the living quarters may be, Mr. Ginsel said they are more affordable than the rent in nearby towns, which has doubled in some areas because of the increased demand for well-paid oil field workers. Having the housing available on-site, he said, allows the department to recruit workers from far away.

Jason Clark, a Department of Criminal Justice spokesman, said the agency has plans to build similar sites in South and West Texas.

He added that the department had more than doubled its recruiting bonus, offering new officers up to $4,000 if they stay on the job for a year. In 2012 and 2013, it awarded 1,173 of those bonuses. And prison officials have intensified recruiting efforts, seeking out military veterans and former department employees, and targeting communities where companies have laid off large numbers of workers.

“Recruitment is a top priority for the agency,” Mr. Clark said.

But even after a 5 percent pay raise from lawmakers, the top salary for a corrections officer is less than $39,000 per year. An entry-level officer makes $29,220.

By comparison, a truck driver hauling water to the disposal wells used in the fracking process can earn about $78,000 per year, according to the Bee County Chamber of Commerce.

The working conditions can make matters worse, said Lance Lowry, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Most prison units are not air-conditioned, and temperatures inside can soar above 100 degrees during the summer. The union has joined inmates’ rights advocates in a lawsuit against the Louisiana prison system that argues the conditions amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Mr. Lowry said his group plans to file a similar action against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“Officers I have talked with, the sense is they’re not safe,” he said. “You can’t run a facility at 50 percent staff and be safe.”

State Senator John Whitmire, Democrat of Houston and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said part of the problem is that the prisons are in remote locations with few qualified workers. Among his primary concerns is that the low pay and the agency’s desperation to hire staff could lead to the kind of officer corruption that Mr. Lopez warned his recruits about.

“There are fine corrections officers — families who have done it two and three generations,” Mr. Whitmire said. “But you’ve got some who I would strongly suggest shouldn’t be there.”

While increased pay would help retain some prison staff, he said, the long-term solution is one Texas is already working toward: significantly reducing the prison population, which currently stands near 150,400.

Despite the reduced staff, Mr. Ginsel said, the agency’s main focus is safety for officers, inmates and the communities where the prisons are.

Terri Langford contributed reporting in Austin.

A version of this article appears in print on November 14, 2014, on Page A21A of the National edition with the headline: Prison Officials Seeking Ways to Recruit and Retain Guards. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe